Silver fish

You are a seaweed forest 

Shifting gentle with tides 

Light glancing through you

Never to the depths of you 

I float in you holding my breath

swept by your unstoppable rhythms

Trying to make friends with the schools of

Shy fish that people you

When the moon rises in you in 

Night excitement

You are a different creature

Silver showing off your beauty

I - a silver fish, visiting from the sky

Learning to breath in you. 

Nat and Em

There is tenderness
Is the softnesses of you
Small moments you each watch for
Fingers out
To catch them and string them
Up, beauty to take the sting
Out of the overflowing river of
World hurt

You give me hope because
You watch for these moments
For each other- each knowing each,
What colours hurt, what colours heal
And how much a back massage means

I wish I could show
You the way your eyes
Soften
When you talk about each other
They soften and widen and suddenly
Love is a thing I can taste on the tip of my tongue

You hold each other
In politics and pain, through sleep, sweat, and season change
And the best thing is, you
Let your friends see these tiny moments you
Collect for each other
You string them up with laughter in the face of Everything

We are all left with lights dancing in the back of our dark

As we sleep

flying parts

I love you
Light
With flying parts of me
Across the whole spectrum of
Colours
With all my tastebuds

Especially the ones
Tuned to the salt in your skin

Especially the blue shades
Of sea, sky, and sad

The sad parts of me tying
Themselves timidly to the parts
Of me
Learning to fly

dimples against history

My smile is skew
History hanging
On my lips
Unequal weighting
Pulling me down
On one side or the
Other
Sunshine or tomorrow
Or solidarity
Constantly working
Against the weight
To pull me into
A smile
Or a kiss
Or, maybe just a dimple

When you fly

I sit across the table from you
Stylish behind your sunglasses
Slow tears sneaking down your cheeks

How you melt,
From belly laughs into small weeping
How you are so beautiful in both.

I want to carve a stone for you.
It will say:

You are everything.
You deserve this.
You are fire.

BeautifulBrave.

I want the stone to have a small door
For you to open, and hide in
When you are exhausted
When you have the world pulling on every appendage

Climbing up your tears, even,
Into your eyes to pick through your mind
Pulling out diamonds and rushing out with them
To show them in the sun

I want the stone to be temperature flexible.
To be warm, in your chest, when your fear is cold
To be cool when your anger is burning

I want the stone to speak your languages
So no one else can claim it, or you
It will be your secret,
Just to whisper to you

You are everything.
You deserve rest.
You deserve space.
You deserve a holding where you do not have to brace
You deserve lightness
You deserve gentle dark
You deserve softness where you do not have to think who to thank
You deserve to explore without having to hold.
You deserve love without having to speak.
You deserve wings where you do not have to worry what will happen to the ground when you fly.

Disaster Surviving

Every day I am a disaster
Is a day I have survived

The chaos around me
Testament to my life

My house with dirt
And persistent smells

Because I do not have
The will to see myself into tomorrow

But I wake up
Open my eyes and enter
The world
No matter the despair I am feeling

My snail shell-
Safe and shameful -
Isn't a home really

It is a sack for my fragments
A kaleidoscope where I can shake myself
Put myself back together again

I don't forget to wear deodorant
There are just days I can't bring
Myself to wash
To take the time to care for myself
To stop running

My shame over takes me often
But I am still here
Working outside my spaces
Holding my flesh in place

Last time I fell in love
I nearly lost my snail shell
I forgot how to read my snail trails
And I lost myself

I still don't quite trust myself
So I engage in small acts of self sabotage
Reminding myself of where I can't
Where I am not worthy

You are bright, glowing.
Neat and contained
Except for the swirls in your head
I fall over my feet
But our bodies still hold each other

I want to say sorry
For being a disaster
I want to say
In explosions of blood and colour
That every day I am a disaster
Is a day I have survived

Don't run

Don't run.
Don't let the locusts in your chest
Anguish you away

My mouth is not an open hole
Waiting to swallow you

I am open in my laugh
Closed in my sleep
Lacing patterns of breath in between

I might catch you in my teeth
For a second but I will breathe
You out gently as soon as I realize

You will not rot
In me
I do not want you still
I want the heat of our breathes to push against each other, against thunder
Into before storm sweat

I want you gentle, but moving
In yourself and unafraid
Of me, at least

Don't run
I don't dream your nightmares
Your fear does not smell like me
I am not your measure of yourself or your hopes


I am skin with its own dreams
Bones with their own hope
Feet with many directions
Breath that sinks while searching
Up

A being of mist and mercy,
Fear and fantasy
Running and rest

My hand is through my hair,
Over my face,
Searching the sky
Touching yours gently

Don't run.